Portugal has a new unicorn. Talkdesk raises $100 million while being valued at over $1 billion.
Talkdesk becomes the second unicorn of Portuguese origin this year, following the success of OutSystems.
The $100 million in Series B funding was led by Viking Global Investors with participation from existing investor DFJ.
Read More: Hot news: Talkdesk has now $21M in Series A
As the largest round ever raised for a private company in the contact center industry, the funding is strong validation of the company’s current performance and future potential.
According to Bloomberg, “The round boosted the software maker’s valuation above the $1 billion unicorn threshold, said CEO Tiago Paiva, but he declined to specify the exact number.”
Founded in 2011 by Paiva and Cristina Fonseca, cloud-based call center software provider Talkdesk today became the fastest Portuguese unicorn ever – taking just seven years to reach a $1 billion evaluation — overtaking Portugal’s first unicorn, Farfetch, which took eight years to reach unicorn status.
Tiago Paiva
“If you survey our competitive landscape today, most of the products are going on 20 years or more in age. With our modern architecture, we are turning the contact center industry on its head,” said Paiva in a statement.
“Today’s funding ensures that Talkdesk continues our momentum to lead change in this market and serve our current enterprise customers as well as the rapidly increasing number of global contact centers looking to benefit from a modern cloud platform,” the CEO added.
To empower customer service representatives and improve the overall customer journey, the company will double-down on research and development in key technology areas, such as intelligent context-sensitive routing of voice and digital interactions, actionable analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOoaEbl0bE
The Portuguese startup is redefining a market long dominated by inconvenient and expensive legacy technologies
With more than 1,400 innovative, customer-centric customers such as IBM, Peloton and Stitch Fix, Talkdesk will continue to remake the contact center industry and drive the next generation of interactive customer engagement.
The company currently has offices in the US, the UK, and Portugal and will continue to aggressively grow its global operations, marketing and sales organizations.
Portugal’s 2nd Unicorn, OutSystems
In June, 2018 Lisbon-born OutSystems reached an evaluation of over $1 billion.
With a €305 million ($360 million) investment from Goldman Sachs and KKR, OutSystems is now valued at over $1 billion and became Portugal’s second unicorn.
Read More: Portugal Has A New Unicorn
OutSystems is widely regarded as the leader in its market due to the breadth and depth of the platform. The company serves thousands of customers globally and is recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies with revenues well above $100 million and growing at more than 70 percent annually.
Portugal’s 1st Unicorn, Farfetch
In March of 2015, Farfetch became the first Portuguese company to valued at $1 billion.
Read More: A $1 Billion Milestone for the Portuguese Startup Scene
Farfetch was created in 2008 close to Porto, Portugal by a Portuguese founder, José Neves. Legally the company is British and they have offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, São Paulo and Porto but the genetic is all Portuguese.
The Portugese startup’s international success drew the attention of a €300 million startup scaleup investment fund.